Shy Girl

by Katie Cross

  “Who are you taking?” Vikram asked and broke apart my thoughts. My initial response of no one, of course, almost failed. Last time we’d all gotten together, they’d tortured me with their teasing about my single state. It hadn’t been worth enduring again, which is why I didn’t want to go through that again either.

  “Oh, you know . . .” I finally managed, “a girl.”

  The words nearly choked me. If anyone could sense the lie, it’d be Vik.

  “You got one?” he asked, his voice lifting at the end. “Hadn’t heard you mention anything.”

  “It’s new. You’ll like her.”

  “About damn time, Hernandez. I’m excited to meet her.”

  I snorted, but decided to steer the subject to safer grounds. “You promoting to Yardmaster soon?” I asked.

  “Nah. I like driving the trains too much. Listen, I found a new cliff diving spot while out on the boat the other day. Caught like ten fish, too. You interested? Wanted to try it out but it’s never as fun alone.”

  Flashes of a young teenager that had gone cliff jumping and broken his neck last week surfaced to my mind. I’d been called to the scene to help pull the body out of the lake while his mother, a single woman, sobbed on the shore.

  How I didn’t die as a teenager, I’d never know.

  “Busy weekend,” I lied. “Let’s try again later?”

  “Sure.”

  His unenthusiastic reply made me wonder if even he didn’t really care about it, but wanted to save face. In light of his lecture about Grady living small and safe, I wasn’t sure what to say here.

  Were the thrills of our youth dying due to common sense now?

  The radio on my dash crackled. My shift was going to start in ten minutes, but I needed a chance to scrabble my brain back together. “Listen, I gotta go, but I’ll send you the details of our flight later, all right?”

  “Talk then.”

  The phone clicked off as I closed my eyes, leaned my head back, and sank into the quagmire of problems that had become my social life. Grady’s marriage was more than just one of us finally tying the knot, it was the official descent into structure and routine. It was . . . aging out of what we were before. Leaving behind thrills and challenges and excitement.

  White picket fences and diapers.

  On one level, I totally understood Vikram’s frustration with Grady. Grady was giving up the freedom and flexibility of the life all four of us had always loved, but he’d get something more stable and less lonely in return. Rarely did I ever think about marriage or commitment, but Grady had pulled me toward it again.

  Now, I couldn’t help but at least wonder what I missed.

  With a shake of my head, I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to go. Nothing like work to distract me from the looming monster on my mind: finding a date for Grady’s wedding.

  And she couldn’t be just any girl, because whoever I took would be subjected to all three of my idiot friends at the same time. There would be questioning and judgment and vetting, because the boys always looked out for me. Not to mention the potential of drama from Victoria, and all of this wrapped up in a ritzy, Caribbean island package. Whoever I took, I had to be with for days on end.

  No, this girl had to be special, and I had three days to find her before I had to finalize the flight, which left in a week.

  Plenty of time.

  With four minutes left in my shift, I opened my phone and pulled up my text messages.

  * * *

  Jayson: Hey Char. Coffee again this Friday?

  * * *

  Her reply came seconds later.

  * * *

  Charlotte: Same place as a few weeks ago?

  Jayson: Same time.

  Charlotte: Yep. Xio told me you took her last week. See you there!

  * * *

  Relieved, I tossed the phone into my cup holder, pulled the SUV into drive, and peeled out of the lake bed with my thoughts churning.

  The Frolicking Moose smelled like vanilla and coffee beans when I stepped inside on Friday evening.

  Dagny glanced up from behind the counter, her jade green eyes unsurprised to see me there. She didn’t bat an eye at my weekly meetings, but did seem curious from time to time. She gave me a quick smile, then turned back to her task. Three pens stuck out of the back of her hair when she spun around. They seemed to hold her brown hair into a loose knot. My brain knotted into a tumble of questions.

  Was she still doing okay after the gun incident?

  Any sort of PTSD?

  Rarely did I know about what happened to people after an incident, and even more rarely did I follow up to figure it out. Chasing the adrenaline of those moments was one thing for a guy like me, but how did a woman like Dagny bounce back? She had to work every day in the same place she’d been assaulted.

  Maybe that sucked.

  Before I could ask, someone approached from my right. A petite woman with dark hair, bright red heels, and sparkling hazel eyes came to my side. Charlotte. She flashed me a quick smile, but turned to Dagny.

  “Soy caramel macchiato,” Charlotte said.

  Dagny zipped to the register, punched in Charlotte’s order, and turned to me with a hesitant smile. “A-already g-got yours. B-b-both are on the h-house.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, my hand halfway to my wallet, but she held up her hand. “P-p-please.”

  Her eyes had a note of pleading in them, as if there was more to say but she didn’t want to say it. I held my breath and silently debated for a moment before I finally gave in.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Since we’d done this several times before, Dagny grabbed my favorite mug and headed for the coffee. Charlotte studied Dagny closely, then looked back to me, as if startled by something. Then she pointed to her purse on our usual table and started me there with a not-so-gentle shove.

  While we settled in across from each other, I tried to pull my thoughts away from Dagny. It wasn’t easy. Pitted against Charlotte’s flashy attire and sparkling presence, Dagny was more like a down-home friend. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt that said I got your hot beans across the front.

  Charlotte folded her arms across her chest and lifted her dark eyebrows. “Abuela says you haven’t seen her in three months.”

  A forced breath came out of me. “I know. I’m busy.”

  She ticked up a familiar, judgmental eyebrow. “Too busy for your family?”

  “No.”

  Her glare deepened. “If you haven’t seen her, then clearly—”

  “Are you here as her servant?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “We all are! It’s in the family contract.”

  I held up two hands. “Okay. Okay. Too busy, no. I just . . . I haven’t been around much anywhere but work and . . .”

  The words I don’t want to see her died on my lips.

  “She cares about you.”

  “She chased me with a rolling pin!”

  Her lips pressed together in a poor attempt not to laugh, but it bubbled out of her anyway. Then she sobered when I glared. Her ice queen eyes softened. “Sorry. That was a bit strong. I just . . . we miss you. It feels like you’re avoiding us.”

  I am.

  Truth laced her words, which made me feel worse, because I certainly wasn’t being forthcoming. Yes, I had coffee with one of my cousins most Fridays in a casual bid to avoid the massive Sunday dinner my family had every week. My plan seemed sound. Disappearing off the radar from the family would really incur abuela’s wrath, so I didn’t entirely leave. With my occasional check-ins, abuela could get second-hand information and, for a few weeks, I could act like I wasn’t running away.

  Clearly, it wasn’t working.

  The breaking apart of whatever Victoria and I had sent me into a tailspin months ago. At the same time, Abuela went on a mission to get me married. After setting me up with three dates that utterly failed, she'd chased me out of her house with a rolling pin. I ran like a dog with his tail betwee
n his legs and avoided returning as much as possible.

  Oblivious to our conversation, as heated as it must seem, Dagny shuffled around behind the counter and drew my attention again. Even though she did nothing, I couldn’t help but look at her. Like a dog to a bone, however, Charlotte returned to her original topic. Of all my cousins, she had always been the most persistent. The fault here was mine. Should have asked Xiomara back.

  “So, why haven’t you come?” she asked.

  My shoulders slumped as I sighed. “My best friend is getting married and he asked me to be the best man. Plus I've been doing sixty hour weeks with the drug issues that have been surfacing. And I didn't want to get another lecture on settling down to marriage and babies.”

  “Which friend?”

  “Grady.”

  She frowned. “Dang. I liked him the most, and you always seemed closest to him. But what does he have to do with the family?”

  I sighed. “If I show up to abuela’s birthday party without a girlfriend or even a hope of a girlfriend, she's going to attack again.”

  Char didn't disagree. Our abuela was a loving woman most of the time. She muttered curse words at us in Spanish, threatened us with a wooden spoon if we didn’t behave, and sent us home with bellies stuffed full of rice, tortillas, and beans. The only time she didn’t forgive us our stupidity was on her birthday.

  Practically a religious day, she gathered all of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren like a mother hen. All forty of us cluttered their tiny little farm and celebrated abuela’s life for a full day. That day came two weeks after Grady's wedding, and it loomed like an ugly thing in the back of my mind.

  To add insult to injury, abuela's health wasn’t good. Likely, this would be her last birthday before old age took her. I couldn’t believe the old lady had lasted this long.

  “Tell me about you,” I said and leaned back. Time to get the spotlight off of me and change the subject. Char loved nothing more than talking about herself. “What happened with that internship? You dating anyone?”

  I nodded and acted engrossed as Charlotte prattled about an internship in the management department of a craft store and a guy that annoyed her, but couldn’t peel my gaze off Dagny and her rumpled perfection tonight.

  Why couldn’t I take my brain off of her?

  Dagny approached and set our drinks down, then followed with a fruit tart and my favorite croissant which I hadn’t ordered.

  “On the h-h-house,” she said.

  “Thanks, Dag.”

  She headed back to the counter before I could meet her gaze, a rogue wisp of hair floating around her temple. I wanted to tuck it behind her ear and out of the way of her eyes.

  Charlotte watched her go, then made a little tutting noise under her breath. “She’s got the hots for you, primo.”

  I scoffed. Nah, women were too afraid of me. The whole cop-vibe carried even into life without my uniform. Like we had an aura we couldn’t shed, or something. Charlotte made a face that suggested you’re wrong but said no more. Her gaze followed Dagny behind the counter.

  “That’s too bad,” she murmured as she reached for her drink. “A stutter. Must be hard to work at a place like this when you can’t get words out. No wonder she’s so quiet. I would be too.”

  Dagny’s shoulders stiffened under my cousins not-so-subtle words. When I glanced over, Dagny’s lips had pinched together, but her face was a glass mask, as serene as any I’d ever seen. A rush of embarrassment, then annoyance, flooded me.

  “I never noticed,” I replied coolly.

  Charlotte’s eyes widened at my tone, then closed on a grimace. “Oh,” she whispered as heat flooded her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “And yet,” I muttered with a glare, “you said it, idiota.”

  Charlotte cast a concerned glance to Dagny, then mumbled something I couldn’t understand in Spanish. Dagny’s shoulders relaxed a little, then turned to the drive thru window as a car pulled up.

  After Charlotte and I swapped family gossip, ate our desserts, and caught up on her love life—which was far more plentiful than mine—she stood up.

  “It’s good to see you,” she murmured with a half smile. “Please, come back home? We all want to see you.”

  I nodded.

  After a quick hug, she marched up to the counter with all the presence of a bull. Dagny eyed her warily.

  “I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “I made a comment about your stutter that wasn’t meant to be mean, but probably sounded like it. You present yourself beautifully and I’m sorry if what I said came across as anything else. You’re braver than me.”

  Disbelief colored Dagny’s expression. “I-it’s f-f-fine,” she said, then added a heartfelt, “Th-thank you.”

  Charlotte smiled, turned with one last nod to me, and disappeared out the door. When I approached the counter with our crumb-littered plates and my empty coffee mug, Dagny glanced at me through her eyelashes. She shoved her phone in her back pocket and straightened up a bit too straight. Ah, a guilty face. I knew that better than anything. So what, exactly, had she been texting about?

  “Five stars, as always.” I pushed the cup back toward her. “Thanks, Dagny.”

  A smile tugged at the edges of her lips. “F-five s-s-stars,” she countered with a glance to the door where Charlotte left. “S-s-tutter comment n-notwithstanding.”

  I tilted my head in silent question.

  “L-l-last week, your date was three s-s-stars. The w-week before that was four, and the w-week before that was two.”

  Understanding dawned moments later—Dagny was rating my coffee dates. I laughed, taken off guard by the witty amusement in her eyes. Then I laughed harder when I realized she’d been rating my cousins . . . and she didn’t even know it.

  “Fair,” I said, thinking back. “Very fair.”

  Most of my cousins were female. There was only one other male, Miguel, amidst all twenty-something of us. But Miguel and I met over dirt bikes, not coffee. Most of them lived up the canyon, in the bigger mountain town of Jackson City, so she wouldn’t know them on sight. Because of that, Dagny probably thought these women were love interests. I doubled over now, laughing harder.

  Her nose wrinkled. “H-have I m-missed something?”

  “My cousins,” I said and wiped the tears out of my eyes. “Those girls are all my cousins, not my dates.”

  Dagny blinked in surprise, then giggled. Several moments passed before I’d calmed, then I studied her. “How are you?” I asked. “After the crazy lady, I mean. I heard you’re pressing charges. Good for you.”

  “F-fine.” She shrugged. “Y-you saved the day. S-sorry I w-wasn’t very talkative the other day. I ap-p-preciated you coming to check on me. I was just . . . j-just s-surprised, I guess. I don’t always have the words.” A tilted smile came to her lips. “I-in a lot of ways.”

  Her easy nonchalance struck something inside me, and I realized then why I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  She reminded me of Bastian.

  Quiet. Unassuming. Non-reactive. Sebastian, our thinker, where still waters ran deep. Dagny had that same vibe. The churning in my brain increased, because at one point she’d also reminded me of Vik with her unflustered courage. Something was coming together.

  Something that felt a lot like a plan.

  “No problem,” I said to buy some time. “I’m glad you’re okay. You stayed really calm through the whole thing.”

  “W-without you, it w-would have b-been a disaster.”

  “I heard a rumor that you're graduating college soon. What's your degree?”

  If I surprised her, she didn't show it. “Construction management.”

  “You want to build stuff?”

  She shrugged. “I l-like using m-my hands and b-b-being outside. The m-management p-p-part appeals to me.”

  “That's fantastic.”

  She smiled and the final piece came together with an audible click in my head. Grady. Her ease of
talking about herself and her goals and her love of working with her hands reminded me of Grady. Little pieces of this woman that could relate to every single one of my friends.

  My very protective, difficult-to-talk-to friends.

  Friends that were intimidating by reputation alone, not to mention stoic attitudes and wild disregard for societal rules—namely Bastian and Vik.

  A car pulled up to the drive thru, so Dagny took a step back. “Have a g-good night, J-jayson.” She hesitated, as if she were about to say something else, then turned to the drive thru.

  Meanwhile, a crazy idea grew in the back of my mind.

  And I knew exactly what I was going to do.

  5

  Dagny

  The next day, I stared at my mother’s dilapidated house. Fading paint. Old porch. The windows were clear of dust except for the corners, but revealed only piles and piles of stuff inside. Tension vibrated through me as I closed my eyes and prepared myself to enter. This is fine, I told myself. I don’t have to speak. There is no pressure to have the words.

  I loved my mother and her wild ideas. There was a quality of sincerity within her that few other people had achieved. She lived her life the way she wanted to, and other people could go shoot themselves in the foot—her words, not mine. But trying to get a word in edgewise had always stymied me.

  Mom loved to talk.

  Unbidden, Jayson’s rolling laughter from last night slipped through my mind again. He’d been entirely too attractive while standing in the coffee shop, laughing about something I hadn’t clued into yet. The humiliation of my assumption about his “dates” followed shortly after he left and I’d stewed in the horror of it for a bit.

  Those girls had all been cousins, not dates, and I could have seriously offended him when I rated one as two stars. Mortification tripled back through me, and I groaned. Now I felt less prepared to face Mom than ever before.